...is it possible to upgrade a samba installation on OpenBSD with out upgrading the OS itself.

No, & with the following qualifications:

OpenBSD 3.6 was released in November 2004. It is no longer supported. Note that version 4.4 will be released November 2008.

According to http://www.samba.org, the current stable version is 3.2.0. Version 3.0.28 is available to users of OpenBSD 4.3-release as it is in the 4.3-release ports tree. Version 3.0.30 was checked into OpenBSD's ports tree July 11, 2008, but this is only available to users of 4.4-beta.

Unless you are very well versed in porting software, it is best to stay with what applications are available in OpenBSD's ports tree. Given that a tight coupling exists between the kernel & userland, newer versions of applications cannot be easily retrofitted (if at all...) onto unsupported versions of the operating system, & there will be no official support for such ventures. You will be on your own if you decide to go this route.

If upgrading Samba is a must, you will have to upgrade OpenBSD. The version you are using is nearly four years old.

For more information on third-party applications available to OpenBSD users, study Section 15 of the FAQ:

In case you hadnt guessed, i am a linux/unix "know-nothing". I have inherited a pretty shodily maintained virtually undocumented openbsd server. and want to do little bits at a time.

hope some one can give some sage advice

cheers Tony

Welcome to daemonforums! Hope you consider your time spent here as useful.

I would agree with Ocicat. You have three options-

1) Do nothing. Probably the most stable thing for you.

2) Upgrade the whole system. You are new to OpenBSD, so that's probably not the most desirable option. And given how old your version is, you would basicallly be in the position to have to do a completely fresh installation, which while I see nothing with this, it seems like this may be a bit much for you at this point in time.

3) Uninstall the installation you have and compile the latest version from source. This may seem quick and easy, but it's not- and when Ocicat says that this would be unsupported in the community, it's an understatement- this option could truly expect no help.

Are there specific feature, performance, or bug fixes that are driving you to the latest version of Samba? If you are interested gain a lot more experience with OpenBSD, you may want to be happy with what you have until you achieve that level of proficiency.

One other point which should be made clear is that "upgrading" the operating system as defined by the OpenBSD project requires one to upgrade through eachsequential release -- meaning you would have to go from 3.6 to 3.7 to 3.8 to 3.9, etc.all the way up to 4.3 or 4.4.

In your case, whenever you decide to refresh all software installed on this particular system, it will be far simpler to do a fresh install. Installation of OpenBSD can be exceptionally simple once you get used to what is being asked. YouTube has a video of someone installing OpenBSD in two minutes, not that I recommend you speed through the process: